This year I really can’t wait until Father’s Day to give Craig some credit where credit is due. Our world changed pretty quickly this March. One day I was running around doing my normal routine of morning school drop offs and working, the next I was in the hospital fighting cancer. Yep, didn’t see that coming. In a moment of two seconds, Craig leveled up, rose to the occasion and became super dad. So I was so excited when Intel sent me this HP Pavillion touchscreen laptop with a super fast Intel Core i7-6500U processor to surprise him with as an early Father’s Day gift.
Craig has taken over all of my duties at home with Kayla and Blake in addition to working full time. He does drop off, pick up, makes lunches, cooks dinner, takes Blake to swim class and coaches Kayla’s soccer team. I don’t even know how to thank him. There aren’t enough words. But I guess it starts with simply acknowledging the fact that he is literally doing it all. So Craig, THANK YOU! You are amazing and I am so lucky to have you.
In order to make this “new normal” work, Craig has started working from home in the mornings before the kids get up and then takes them to school like I would. We are fortunate and grateful that his employer has been incredibly caring and flexible, working with our family through this tough time. Otherwise, I have no idea what we would do.
Like most in the securities trading industry, his regular office setup involves several monitors and computers with fast processors. This allows him to watch multiple stocks, do weird mathematical things that are beyond my comprehension and communicate with his peers.
I knew the HP Pavillion would be great for him because that Intel i7 processor means the ability to quickly switch between programs and web pages, provides crisp images and a fast log on with .5 second wake time. In my industry I can take my sweet time editing an image or writing a blog post. In his, it’s about having lightning fast reaction time and accuracy, so speed and reliability are key. This laptop would also work well for a gamer because of its speed and great graphics card, but Craig is no gamer. Yet.
Yes, I’m hospital bound and these are strange times as I go through chemotherapy, but I’m still me. You can take my hair, you can kill off my bone marrow but apparently you can’t take away my desire to be a little crafty. So I decided to make my own wrapping paper for Craig’s gift with a pop culture reference to what an awesome dad Craig is to our kids.
I asked my sister to bring me some supplies so I could make a custom stamp and stamp my own paper. That’s the beauty of sisters, they don’t look at you like you have three heads when you make odd requests. I created a “Dad Level 100” stamp and used it on some basic kraft paper for custom wrapping paper.
Naturally, the nurses walked in on me with my craft supplies all over my hospital room and me on the floor stamping away. This is just a typical day in my life I reassured them as they laughed (and probably thought I was nuts) For at least a few minutes, it felt like I was back home in my crafty element, which was wonderful.
It makes my heart happy to know that I was able to give Craig a gift he truly needed at a time when he most needed it. Like many men, Craig doesn’t want for much. This historically makes him hard to buy for. However, I have noticed a big shift in the last few years of dads working from home more and more. Whether it’s temporary and for a small part of the day like Craig or permanently full time, it’s nice to have powerful and portable tools at home to get the job done.
So far, Craig has loved having a new tech toy. With 12 gigabytes of RAM and a terabyte hard drive this is a laptop that will last and can keep up with all of the programs he needs to run. A couple of months back, I shelled out thousands of dollars for a new laptop of my own as it was finally time and mine was nearly five years old. Both of our laptops have i7 processors and a one terabyte hard drive, but I was amazed to see that his was a fraction of the price of mine. In fact when I saw the price on Walmart.com I almost cried. Yep it still hurts.
If you’re curious about Craig’s new HP Pavillion laptop you can see all of the specs here.
This post is sponsored by Intel. Thanks to Intel for helping me share our story.
